--ROGER SIMON column: “[T]he 90-minute debate proved Einstein’s theory that time can actually slow down. I would accuse the candidates of just going through the motions, but there was hardly any motion. … During the debate, they seemed so dispirited -- even when regurgitating their pre-tested attack lines -- that I expected to see Madame Defarge sitting in the front row of the audience knitting their names into a sweater. … This was the first debate in which Santorum sat atop the national polls. And he was nervous. Very nervous. So nervous that he looked like a graduate of the Bob Dole School of Debating, in which you are allowed to speak only in the impenetrable language of Capitol Hill.” http://bit.ly/wK47Ou

Story Continued Below

--THE BIG PICTURE – GOP fears rising -- Jonathan Martin, John F. Harris and Alexander Burns: “GOP leaders are watching with rising dismay as the 2012 presidential campaign has featured excursions into social issues like contraception and a sprint by the candidates to strike the toughest stance against illegal immigration … To those Republicans, the probable result looks more and more like a general election fought on a much narrower band of turf than the GOP leaders assumed even a few months ago.

“As recently as 2010, when Republicans elected historic numbers of women and minorities to high office, a permanent expansion of the conservative coalition looked within the realm of possibility to party strategists. The phenomenon of a party talking to itself — rather than reaching out to new voters — was on sharp display at [the debate], marked by nearly two hours of peevish and often confusing exchanges between Mitt Romney and his surging challenger, Rick Santorum. http://bit.ly/Apt7N9

--TIME’s Mark Halperin gave Romney the highest grade of the night, a B+: “Once again benefited from a friendly audience (presumably built, in part by his campaign). Displayed his long-running strength by hitting his current chief foe (Santorum) with bucket-loads of opposition research. Not at his best, but on a stage of limp performances, he was good enough to stay on top.” http://ti.me/zz4WZm

SPOTTED: Hard-working CNN anchor John King, racked out in snooze mode by Gate A7, waiting for the ATL-DCA flight. He pulled an all-nighter after moderating the debate in Mesa, Ariz., heading straight for the Phoenix airport and the 12:40 a.m. redeye.

TIME cover, “Yo Decido. Why Latinos will pick the next president,” by Michael Scherer: “Pollsters in both parties believe that just softening the tone could move GOP numbers dramatically. Most Latinos still point to bread-and-butter issues like jobs and the economy as chief concerns, and on the specifics of how immigration policies should be reformed, there is a diversity of Latino opinion. … Obama still faces his own climb back with many Latino voters. After promising to implement immigration reform in his first year in office—and winning 67% of the Latino vote in 2008—Obama opted instead to push health care reform and global-warming bills. At the same time, he has overseen a dramatic increase in deportations. … [A] January poll by Univision and Latino Decisions found that 37% of Hispanics said Democrats did not care about their vote and 9% characterized Democrats as hostile.” See the cover. http://bit.ly/Aht2VmRead Scherer on Arizona. http://ti.me/w95f0O

--Managing Editor Rick Stengel’s “Editor’s Desk” column, “America’s New Decisionmakers”: “For the first time in our history, we have a Spanish sentence as our cover line : Yo decido. I decide.”

BREAKING – “Obama unveils online privacy plan,” by Tony Romm: “The Obama administration is taking a two-pronged approach to online privacy, calling on Congress to pass a ‘consumer privacy bill of rights,’ while putting the onus on companies like Google and Facebook, as well as privacy watchdogs and online advertisers, to forge new data handling rules for the digital age. The highly anticipated report released Thursday reflects the White House’s support for a new law that would spell out how consumers' personal information can be collected, stored, used and shared by the Web’s myriad of entities — some of which have found themselves in Washington's crosshairs recently for mishandling their users' data.

“As part of the rollout, the administration is touting a new voluntary commitment by the Digital Advertising Alliance, a collection of the Internet's largest advertisers. The DAA is the pilot of the Advertising Option Icon, which alerts Web users of ads that are tied to their interests or the websites they visit. The coalition’s members offer a feature that helps users opt out of seeing those ads. On Thursday, the DAA is announcing, in conjunction with the administration report, that it will work with Internet browser companies, and permit the use of browser-based ‘Do Not Track’ tools that allow consumers to control Web tracking and advertisements based on their browsing habits.” http://bit.ly/zb6gfr

--Google’s Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president of advertising: "We’re pleased to join a broad industry agreement to respect the “Do Not Track” header in a consistent and meaningful way that offers users choice and clearly-explained browser controls."

NEW ON THE TWITTERS: @Liz_Cheney

BEN SMITH, “A secret history of the 2008 campaign” – Jeff Berman, the chief delegate counter for Obama for America, has written “The Magic Number,” a memoir “self-published by Berman and available on Amazon as of Thursday. Rich in procedural detail, the book will be a textbook for the small cadre of mechanics who steer the arcane process of delegate selection. But ‘The Magic Number,’ which is also available from Barnes & Noble, is also a kind of secret history of the Obama campaign and an antidote to the sweeping narratives that suggest Obama was the inevitable product of historical forces. Berman’s account is the tale of the little things that could have gone wrong but didn’t, and the small but crucial victories that, taken together, won the White House. The low-profile Berman, whose formal campaign title was national delegate director, was known for his obsessive attention to detail and preparation.” http://bit.ly/xRq3AB$9.99 for Kindle http://amzn.to/wvlImO

SNEAK PEEK – N.Y. Times Magazine, “Scott Ritter’s Other War,” by Matt Bai: “Ritter’s opponents on Iraq still aren’t willing to grant that he knew something they didn’t. The way they see it, Ritter, whose position on W.M.D.’s swung significantly after he left the country in 1998, was like the stopped clock that finally managed to tell the correct time. … History will record, though, that Ritter was right, while those who showed him nothing but contempt were flat wrong. While he wasn’t the only one saying that the war’s pretense was false or that its aftermath could be calamitous, Ritter was almost certainly the most determined dissenter … No doubt his very existence continues to discomfit those who insisted on Hussein’s lethality, and whose explanation for why they were wrong — that the intelligence was fabricated, essentially — has always been undercut by the fact that Ritter was never taken in.” http://nyti.ms/yXmITT

SMART STORY – “Obama goes on offense over high gasoline prices … to divert blame and prepare voters for higher costs ,” by Reuters’ Jeff Mason: “In subtle and not so subtle ways, Obama … is raising the issue of high prices to promote his own policy priorities and blunt criticism from the [GOP] … On Tuesday he cited the extension of the payroll tax cut as a welcome buffer for workers coping with the cost of gas. On Wednesday he proposed … getting rid of tax loopholes that benefit oil and gas companies. … Analysts … said Obama has few options to bring down gasoline prices in the short term and said his energy policies had evolved from focusing on renewable fuels to promoting nuclear energy and natural gas. ‘Basically he's come a long way from the campaign of '08. I think that reflects pragmatism on his part,’ said Guy Caruso, a senior adviser on energy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.”

--Obama will talk gas prices in Florida today – From White House schedule: “[T]he President will travel to the University of Miami where he will tour the school’s Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) where students … become industrial energy-efficiency experts as they help small- to mid-sized manufacturers reduce their energy costs. University of Miami’s IAC is one of 24 nationwide and is part of the Department of Energy’s Industrial Assessment Program.”

TAPPER: “The White House keeps praising these journalists … who’ve been killed … How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistleblowers to court? … [T]he truth should come out abroad; it shouldn’t come out here?”

CARNEY: “[T]hat’s not at all what I’m saying, Jake, and you know it’s not. … [Y]ou’re making a judgment about a broad array of cases, and I can’t address those specifically.” http://abcn.ws/zVyNqu

FIRST LOOK -- PURPLE POLL: The fifth poll of 12 “purple” battleground states by Purple Strategies shows that if Santorum became the nominee, he would do just as well as Romney against Obama. The survey shows Romney trailing POTUS by four points, while Santorum lags the president by two points. The survey shows Romney trending the wrong way on favorability: 27% have a favorable view of Romney, while 57% have an unfavorable view. Voters are becoming slightly optimistic about the economy, but the survey shows Obama remains below 50% on job approval, and voters have concerns about his job performance - including on the most recent policy debate about contraception. See the 8-page deck. http://bit.ly/wirp37

** A message from America’s Building Trades Unions: Don’t Lose Sight! Keystone XL is not about partisanship or a chess game … It's about 20,000 jobs and energy independence. While the unemployment rate for construction workers rises, Congress can take immediate action to create jobs. #JobsCantWait http://jobscantwait.com **

TRANSITIONS: Nu Wexler, communications director for Rep. Chris Van Hollen and the House Budget Comittee Democrats, is moving to become the communications director for Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

JEFF JONES BOBBLEHEAD: American University men's basketball takes on Bucknell at 7 tonight in a conference rivalry: The Eagles are looking to extend their home win streak to 12 games, and a win would put the Eagles in a three-way tie (with Bucknell and Lehigh) for first in the Patriot League. It’s also “Jeff Jones Bobblehead Give-Away Night”: The first 1,000 fans into Bender Arena in Washington will get a bobblehead of head coach Jeff Jones, husband of POLITICO's Danielle Jones) bobblehead!!! See the Jeff Jones doll. http://bit.ly/yBBHr2

THE GREAT TAX DUEL, from Kevin Robillard (@PoliticoKevin):

-- WSJ editorial, “Romney’s Tax Reboot: His 20% marginal rate cut changes the tax debate”: “The rate cut follows the Reagan formula of applying to anyone who pays income taxes. … [T]his should also help Mr. Romney politically, if he makes the case well and with confidence. Conservative voters who have wondered if he is one of them can now see a tangible proposal that will be a governing priority, not merely a pledge to fight for reform some day. It gives him something to fight for beyond his business biography.” http://on.wsj.com/z38mfb

-- “What we don’t know about today’s tax reform plans,” by Ezra Klein: “Both Romney and Obama’s plans rely on closing, capping or otherwise reforming various deductions and tax breaks. But neither plan is specific about which deductions and tax breaks would come under the knife, nor about what would be done to them. So the Tax Policy Center can’t fully assess either proposal. And that means we can’t, either.” http://wapo.st/z8e45U

ROMNEY: Bloomberg, “Romney as Audit Chair Saw Marriott Son of BOSS Shelter Defy IRS,” by Jesse Drucker: “During Romney’s tenure as a Marriott director, the company repeatedly utilized complex tax-avoidance maneuvers, prompting at least two tangles with the Internal Revenue Service, records show. In 1994, while he headed the audit committee, Marriott used a tax shelter known to attorneys by its nickname: ‘Son of BOSS.’ A federal appeals court invalidated the maneuver in a 2009 ruling, siding with the U.S. Department of Justice, which called Marriott’s transaction and attempted tax benefits ‘fictitious,’ ‘artificial,’ ‘spectral,’ an ‘illusion’ and a ‘scheme.’ … Employing another strategy, Marriott legally avoided hundreds of millions of dollars in income taxes thanks to a federal tax-credit program criticized and allowed to expire by Congress. Marriott has also shifted profits to a Luxembourg shell company. During Romney’s years on the board, Marriott’s effective tax rate dipped as low as 6.8 percent, compared with the federal corporate statutory rate of 35 percent.” http://bloom.bg/yJ08Qj

METRO SECTION -- WashPost A1, “Va. ultrasound bill in doubt; invasive test would be optional,” by Anita Kumar and Laura Vozzella: “The legislation initially sought to require ultrasounds, which early last week prompted opponents to raise concerns over the procedures’ potentially invasive nature. In many cases, the ultrasounds would require a vaginal probe to establish gestational age. On Wednesday, citing concerns over that intrusiveness, [Virginia Gov. Bob] McDonnell (R), an abortion opponent who had repeatedly said he would sign the bill, asked state lawmakers to amend the measure. House members approved the governor’s amendments, but the bill’s Republican sponsor in the Senate said she would try to pull the measure for the session.” http://wapo.st/z2SWwt

MEDIAWATCH – From release: “Janet Robinson, until December president and CEO of The New York Times Company, has joined the International Advisory Board at Fleishman-Hillard International Communications … Dave Senay, Fleishman-Hillard president and CEO, [said:] ‘Janet has a deep, firsthand understanding of the forces that are affecting the business of the media’ … [O]ther … members of the board [include] Andy Card, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, Dr. David Kessler, Mickey Kantor, former Gov. Tom Ridge, Adm. Vern Clark, John Onoda, David Byrne, Keki Dadiseth, Shoichiro Irimajiri and Guenter Verheugen.” http://on-msn.com/wJAjdb

--Forbes, “Gannett Building Paywalls Around All Its Papers Except USA Today,” by Jeff Bercovici: “[T]he nation’s largest newspaper publisher, is planning to switch over all of its 80 community newspapers to a paid model by the end of the year, it announced during an investor day held in Manhattan Wednesday. … Gannett CEO [Gracia Martore] explained that decision as a matter of priorities, noting that USA Today is in the midst of overhauling its website to create a user experience more similar to that of an iPad app.” http://onforb.es/zdlfx3

--“Tony Blair's wife sues over phone-hacking” – AFP/London: Cherie Blair “has launched legal action over phone hacking, her lawyer said on Wednesday, reportedly against Rupert Murdoch's media empire. … ‘[W]e have issued a claim on behalf of Cherie Blair in relation to the unlawful interception of her voicemails.’”

--BEHIND THE SCREENS AT THE AP – Internal memo from Washington Bureau Chief Sally Buzbee: “Wendy Benjaminson has taken over the foreign affairs/defense/national security [editing ]portfolio. … Anne Gearan has moved to White House reporting, focusing on national security, reporting to Terry Hunt … As Ben Feller and his team focus on the campaign and economy this year, it’s critical we keep a strong focus on issues like Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Then Sally lists the bureau’s reporting teams, including:

SPORTS BLINK – Anthony Federico (@AntFeds), the former ESPN Mobile producer who was fired for his lame “Chink In the Armor” headline about Jeremy Lin is, like the Knicks phenom, a vocal Christian. Federico posted a statement of regret yesterday: “I wrote the headline in reference to the tone of the column and not to Jeremy Lin’s race. It was a lapse in judgment and not a racist pun. It was an awful editorial omission and it cost me my job. I owe an apology to Jeremy Lin and all people offended. I am truly sorry. …

“I wrote thousands and thousands and thousands of headlines in my five years at ESPN. There never was a problem with any of them and I was consistently praised as an employee – both personally and professionally. Two weeks prior to the incident I had my first column published on espnW.com. My career was taking off. Why would I throw that all away with a racist pun? This was an honest mistake. … I am actually a Knicks fan and an ardent supporter of Jeremy Lin. Not surprisingly, he has handled the entire situation with grace and class. Now I have to find a new job and move on with my life. My solace in this is that ‘all things work together for good for those who love the Lord.’” http://bit.ly/y0B9UP

--The day after Federico was fired, he tweeted: “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!”

DESSERT -- Barney Frank, explaining to Jimmy Kimmel why he won’t miss fundraising: “When people give you money and you do exactly what they don’t want, that’s not a nice thing. … We’re the only people, elected officials, who are supposed to take money from strangers and have it have no influence on our behavior. Practicing being ungrateful takes a bit out of you.”

** A message from America’s Building Trades Unions: Both sides of the aisle support building the Keystone XL Pipeline, with 60% support from Americans overall. These jobs are needed now to help America get back to work! According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, last month’s national unemployment rate dropped - but the construction industry unemployment rate rose from 13% to 16%. Help America’s Building Trades Unions tell Congress to act now and approve the Keystone XL – Call 866-228-3314 and tell Congress that our highly skilled workers are ready to work. #JobsCantWait http://jobscantwait.com **

****** A message from UnitedHealth Group: What does it take to create a modern, high-performing, simpler health care system? Expanding access to care through proven state-based coverage and employer-sponsored insurance. Making health care more affordable with consumer-directed care and value-based payments. Supporting and modernizing Medicare to meet the complex health challenges of America’s seniors. And reinvesting in health to support research and innovation. Learn more about these ideas at http://www.unitedhealthgroup.com ******

Authors:

About The Author

Mike Allen is the chief White House correspondent for POLITICO. He comes to us from Time magazine where he was their White House correspondent. Prior to that, Allen spent six years at The Washington Post, where he covered President Bush's first term, Capitol Hill, campaign finance, and the Bush, Gore and Bradley campaigns of 2000. Before turning to national politics, he covered schools and local governments in rural counties outside Fredericksburg, Va., for The Free Lance-Star, then wrote about Doug Wilder, Oliver North, Chuck Robb and the Bobbitts for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, where he nurtured police sources on overnight ride-alongs through housing projects. Allen also covered Mayor Giuliani, the Connecticut statehouse and the wacky rich of Greenwich for The New York Times. Before moving to The Times, he did stints in the Richmond and Alexandria bureaus of The Washington Post. Allen grew up in Orange County, Calif., and has a B.A. from Washington and Lee University, where he majored in politics and journalism.